Wild Parrot

I happened to be sitting at my desk or I would have missed it. A wild parrot stopping by to say hello.

This is actually a thing in Texas (Google wild parrots in Texas).  We used to have a beautiful green one stop by and say hello when we lived in a different house.  First time I've seen one here.

So fun to get it on camera.

A quiet day to enjoy wellness

It's up to 42 degrees now and headed to the upper fifties.  And sunny.  I'll get going and walk the dogs soon so they will be more content. 

There are two projects I'm committed to at least screwing around with today.  I've got to see if I can somehow fix our fence.  It is an iron one that came with the house.  You can see through it and I wanted to put the trash cans there.  So I put up three fence boards to block the view and attached them in kind of a clunky way.  They have slid down and kind of scrape the ground now. And I think they are skewing the gate operation.  So I'm going to take them down and remount them.  I've got some metal straps that will do the job.  Maybe.

And I need to get out the ladder (famous last words of the 71 year old) and fix the last Phillips Hue light bulb.  When I changed my Amazon password this whole house went wonky.  I've got a bunch of lights doing different things at different times and all that got screwed up.  Two of them reconnected.  I managed to get a couple of more with lots of work.  But I finally gave up and bought a Phillips Hue Bridge.  Turns out that was worth the money and might possibly be worth even more with a proposed update.  I managed to get all the lights but one, the most difficult to get to of course, back on line.  I need to go up the ladder and unscrew it and get the ID number off so the bridge can reset it.  

I've seen some rumors that the Phillips Hue Bridge will institute proximity abilities.  The lights somehow already can sense proximity but the system isn't leveraging it.  Phillips has indicated that they will send out an update for free that will allow it to work.  That way I can have different lights do different things based on someone approaching them.  I turn off all our outside lights at night.  We've got a security light in back that comes on automatically but Hue lights in front that don't.  I really don't want to spotlight someone just walking down the sidewalk and the affordable systems don't do a very good geofencing job.  But having my garage or porch lights come on when they sense someone close would be great.  Inoffensive but appearing to be done from someone turning on a switch as if they are watching.  

All this stuff is slowly integrating better over time.  Alexa and Google are working together more than they used to.  I've got pieces of both systems so I'd like them to be supportive.

So, walk the dogs, work on the fence, fix the light.

I'm exhausted.  But it so nice to feel well again.  Bullet dodged.